


Day 29. Chicken

by Munnin



Series: Fictober [29]
Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 22:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16437728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: Djarrah finds peace with his life, but the past never truly leaves us.





	Day 29. Chicken

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re just joining in, I urge you to read the [whole series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1145777) from the beginning. Some of these stories read fine alone but they’re all part of a larger interwoven plot.

Four years I have lived in peace and balance. 

The day I felt the scourging of the Jedi Order I wept, I screamed. I made the ground tremble with my pain that day. 

And then, with help, I put it behind me. 

It was not the way of the Iron Tree people to shun natural emotions. The Jedi saw peace and passivity as the only way to keep from falling into darkness. They taught us to fear our feelings, to subjugate them. The Iron Trees people taught me to use them, to direct them. 

Fear informed instincts – to be cautious of dangerous situations, to protect myself and those around me. 

Anger lent strength in times of need. It put force in the hands of the righteous and fuelled acts of justice. 

Grief could drive creation. Only grief could fell the young Iron Trees, or carve the hollow poles that held the bones of the dead. 

They did not shame me for my pain, but showed me how to use it. 

At the wreckage of the Separatist Refinery, left abandoned after Master Obi-Wan drove the droids out, I turned my inner rage outward.

I tore durocrete and sheet metal apart without touching it. I stripped wires from consoles and the bodies of fallen droids. I felt the Force swirl around me – not the dark side, not the light. Just the living energy of all things. 

Through it I felt afresh the death of every youngling, the shock of every betrayed knight. The bile and bitter regret of every member of the council. 

All of that I felt, and all of that I channelled into turning the detritus of the invaders into something new. Something useful. 

I held out my ghost hand and pulled my little starship to me, placing it at the centre. The hyperspace ring too. Drawing something out of orbit and landing it in the sand would have been impossible, even for Master Yoda, but I could do it.

I had the strength of the whole of my world behind me. Not because I demanded it, as a Sith might have done. Or expected it, as the Jedi might have. But because I asked, because I respected the tides and balances and was one with them.

There was a time I wanted to burn or crush the ship, to close that path forever. But here in the balance, I could see it might be needed one day. And so, I buried it. Under a shield of discarded parts.

I built spires of durocrete, bent plastoid into new shapes, made burrows and hollows of the processing crucibles. I braided wire into ropes and coiled them in great loops to bind my creation together. 

Small creatures would find shelter from the midday sun here. Water would form pools here when the rains came. The winds would blow soil into the cracks and crags and the hardy plants of this arid area would grow in them. 

Here on the desert fringe of the great Iron Tree forest, I poured my grief and loss into a new ecology. Over time, my world would accept my gift, and this alien thing would be one with the world.

And then I turned my back on it, feeling rage and regret lift from my shoulders, as I walked away, four years ago.

Since then I had grown strong and hard. My skin would never be as dark as the rest of my tribe, all those years kept hidden from the sun but it was darker now than ever it had been. My hair fell in long dreadlocks, almost to my waist, swaying as I walked. I’d forgotten what it was like to wear boots, to not feel the soil and the sand and the water under my feet. 

I wore the crystal from my sabre on a string around my neck. The kyber of my spear ran through every colour and hue, in reaction to my mood and will. But the sole reminder of my Jedi life remained red. 

The red both of the Iron Tree people and of the blood and fire the Jedi Order had fallen to. 

I was hunting in the high mountain ranges above the Iron Tree forest when I felt it. A swirling in the Force. Some foreign thing entering our world. 

I ran and ran, trusting in my knowledge of the land and the flow of the Force to guide me as I leaped and raced across the ravine and down the valley. My tribe waited for me at the edge of the tree line, where the forest gave way to the desert.

I could feel the ship touching down on the soil, near the barrow that hid my own ship. Three beings, two of them were clones, the other shrouded; as if they wore the Force as a cloak pulled tight around them, disguising their form. 

Worry rippled through the tribe, fearing the coming of strangers. Fear of the Sky People, the Child Thieves, was still strong. It was not cowardice. They had every right to fear the coming of alien people. They had not forgotten, nor would they ever forgive. 

I nodded to the warriors, those whose nature was always in motion, as mine was. I felt their eagerness to face the foe, a sharp counterpoint to the feelings of the others. We would go out to meet the outlanders, but not unarmed. 

On my signal, they fanned out and became one with the land. Unseen, but for those who knew how to look. 

The outlanders would see only me, and never know they were surrounded.

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to Josh for his editing skills.


End file.
